Welcome to I Swear by This, an interview series where we chat with our favorite fashion and beauty insiders about the beauty products they use down to the last drop. This week, we asked rapper Rico Nasty to share all of the products she's loving right now.
Rico Nasty doesn't make elevator music. With razor-sharp lyrics and her signature relentless flow, she spews out bars with such conviction that Apple Music once compared her voice to a revving chainsaw. On tracks like "Smack A Bitch" and "OHFR?" rage is a reliable muse, but on her latest mixtape Las Ruinas, she leans into her softer side with songs like "Chicken Nugget", a tender ode to her son. This evolution branches into her aesthetic choices for this new era as well. From the wardrobe to the makeup to the hair, fans are seeing her "coming into being such a fucking lady," she tells Coveteur.
Less than an hour before taking the stage at the Toronto stop on Kehlani's Blue Water Road Trip Tour, the rapper puffs on a joint as she looks back on her evolution in the industry. "When I was 19, I was in the limelight. I had everybody commenting on my pictures. So at a very early age, I developed, I don't wanna call it body dysmorphia, but I was very hard on myself. With this project, what fans are seeing is me being more confident with my body and just growing up," she shares.
But though she's growing up, she hasn't outgrown her rager roots. "With this project, I made sure that the fashion is more feminine, but I still bring the grunge with the makeup because I think that's the sugar trap, combining the hard with the soft," she explains. "I've always liked to [play around with] juxtaposition and to put shit where they don't go. I'll do like a cool fashion girlie type of outfit with like, crazy alt makeup. I feel like I'm just learning to like myself again."
At 25, she's developed an air-tight strategy to looking and feeling her best while on the road, from drinking a gallon of water each day to using a cold washcloth on her under eyes to alleviate puffiness. But her top tip for staying centred before a show came from working with her makeup artist Dee Carrion. Since Carrion tends to do very intricate linework on Rico, she has to stay very still—that stillness translated figuratively, too. "Working with her has taught me that glam shouldn't be chaotic," she explains. In recent years, she's made a point to not answer texts or emails while getting her makeup done to allow herself to relax. "It's like I'm driving. It taught me to be patient and to allow myself to get a moment. Sometimes I like to keep myself so busy that I'm not paying attention to what's really going on. And it's really good to have that time because then when it's time to go to work, I'm clear-headed."
Makeup is also a way to connect to her on-stage persona—it's how Maria Kelly (her given name) becomes Rico Nasty. "With glam, the older I get, the more I realize that I'm me and that Rico Nasty is a character that I've developed," she explains, as she takes another inhale. "But I feel like overall, I'm still me, I'm a regular person. I just have to pretend sometimes. I have to pretend like everything is okay. Glam takes me out of my head. It's distracting, but in a good way. You don't have to think about being ugly or not being good enough because you have four people working to make you pretty. It's just like, let it happen. Let the bad bitch build. That's honestly, what gets me through everything. And when I get out of the chair, I'm Rico Nasty and I'm ready to put on a show." Before stepping onto the stage in Toronto, Rico broke down her beauty must-haves.
All Nighter Long-Lasting Makeup Setting Spray
"In my dressing room, I always have this setting spray. I have a song where I say it’s gon’ stay ‘cause it's Urban Decay. This is gonna stay on all fucking night."
Fixing Spray
“If I’m not using Urban Decay and I'm feeling ballerific, then we’re gonna do the Kryolan Fixing Spray. When it’s a big show and there’s a big stage that I have to run back and forth on, I’m using this."
Beeswax Lip Balm
“For lip balms, I like the Bite Beauty Lip Balm but I also really love Burt’s Bees. No matter where I am, I’m going to grab this. Growing up, there was a point in time when my mom yelled at me for having so many Burt’s Bees Lip Balms. I had them everywhere—I had them in the car, I had them in her purse, I had them in her church bag, my friends were finding them at their houses and they were like, ‘Bitch…’ I just love Burt’s Bees. That’s my shit."
Rough Rider Moldable Styling Clay
“I have a mullet now and I use Kevin Murphy everything—everything! Like, have you tried the styling clay? This is what I use for my spikes before I add hairspray. One of my hairstylists put me onto this a while ago when I had my hair bleached and I still use it to this day. And it smells so good."
Superfood Antioxidant Cleanser
“When I first started using this, I wasn't taking care of my skin at all and it's a really, really quick fix. If you use it frequently, it's bomb as hell for your skin. But if you're one of those people where [blemishes] just pop up, get this because it'll make your pimple go away in like, three days."
Triple Peptide + Cactus Oasis Serum
"My skin does not need ten different things. It really only needs a good cleanser, a nice moisturizer—something that's not gonna make it oily—and then a serum for the next morning. I'll wash my face at night, take off all the makeup, use the cleanser and then I'll put on moisturizer to go to sleep. But I don't use a serum at night because it makes my skin too sticky and I feel like it makes me prone to break outs. Instead, in the morning I'll wash my face with cold water and then I use this serum."
Her Eau de Parfum
"This is my favorite scent. Everyone’s always like, ‘You’re not a CHANEL girl?’ I like CHANEL, but I really like Burberry and Tom Ford."